List Posts

Not to mention the hundreds of examples from BuzzFeed, ViralNova and The Huffington Post.

The much debated list post.

Yeah, I know. Your knee-jerk reaction might be to avoid lists at all costs.

List posts (often called “listicles”) get a terrible rap. They’re considered the bottom feeders of web content, because websites exploit their ability to create them quickly, pumping out useless filler content to try to manipulate SEO.

Don’t be too quick to write off list posts, though.

If you approach list posts in the right way, they can be extremely useful for your audience.

They’re everywhere because they work. People love list posts just as much as they love to hate Kim Kardashian. Our brains love numbers and numbered lists (likely because we like to know what to expect).

Instead of thinking of list posts as filler content, just think of them as a way to organize the extremely useful data you’ll publish. When you’re creating a list post, offer a TON of value.

You can create ultimate guides for beginners or more advanced users on a topic. Check out how Nerd Fitness catered to their beginner readers with this meaty guide to the paleo diet (see what I did there?):

Ultimate guides can take a substantial time commitment to create, but when done right, the benefits of creating the definitive resource on something are mind-blowing.

Ultimate guides most often end up becoming evergreen cornerstone content that work hard for you far after you’ve created them.

These definitive resources can put you on the map, rake in the search engine traffic, convert like crazy and bring more customers and clients than you’ll know what to do with.

Tips for ultimate guides:

Don’t half-ass a resource and call it an ultimate guide. Just because it says “ultimate guide” in the headline doesn’t make it so.

Define your audience before creating an ultimate guide. If you’re creating an ultimate guide for a beginner, it will look a lot different from an ultimate guide for somebody more advanced.

Zone in on one small, focused topic and go very deep and detailed with your ultimate guide.

Marinate on your ultimate guides. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you can’t create an ultimate guide in a day either. Because these are such comprehensive resources, you need time and space for them. Some of my best ideas and most important points in my ultimate guides came to me days after I began creating them.

Expert Roundup Posts

Have you written a piece of content that brought in more than 20,000 views, 1,500 shares and 80 comments?

If not, that may just be because you haven’t created an expert roundup post.

In our guide to creating expert roundup posts, Tor Refsland describes how to write an epic expert roundup post, where you collect several influencer or expert’s opinions on something - and then round them up into a guide or opinion piece.

You can see how this is done on SuccessisWhat with Peter’s roundup for beating procrastination:

Take a look at that sexy list post headline, too.

There are a couple of reasons this works so well for traffic, shares and conversions:

The people you featured tend to share with their audience. Influencers and experts tend to have larger audiences than you do

This triggers the false fame effect, where the “fame” of the influencer rubs off on you. This provides a nice boost of social proof, which increases conversions by 30% or more.

One thing with expert roundup posts that you should be careful of is that they can take a long time - not because you’re writing a lot, but because you have to chase people down.

Sending out dozens of emails with your request, compiling and curating the answers, making sure they’re formatted nicely - it can all be a lot of work.

Tips for expert roundups:

Reach out to at least 20% more people than you’d like to feature. That way you can account for those who won’t respond.

Focus your expert roundup on one question or concept. The more focused, the better for your reader.

Combine your roundup with a list post or an ultimate guide. Your aim in content marketing is to make your content as useful as possible, so rather than just throwing the answers at your audience, provide even more value.

If you’d rather not chase people down, try out the next type of content...

Example Roundup Posts

So let’s say you were feeling a bit lazy and didn’t want to have to chase down experts and influencers for quotes for your expert roundup post…

But you still wanted to cash in on the awesome benefits they provide.

How convenient.

Well luckily, you can do this…

Through an example roundup post - where you use experts and influencers as an example to illustrate a point.

This differs from an expert roundup post because you aren’t actually going out and collecting responses - you’re just using the influencer as an example.

Most audiences could use a little inspiration or motivation, so why not take advantage of this fact and create content to serve this purpose like the team at Fizzle has done?:

Rather than just posting little messages of inspiration (which may be better suited for social media), up the ante on inspirational posts by giving actionable steps and information the audience can use when they’re all amped up from your motivational message.

Tips for inspirational posts:

These don’t have to be long posts. In fact, 3,000 words of inspirational content would be a bit much. Keep it just long enough to inspire your audience (but no longer).

Don’t do too many of these. Inspirational content serves a purpose, but it’s also easy to lean on when you’re out of content ideas. Space these out.

Rallying Cry Posts

There are regular businesses and blogs…

And then there are the ones that build strong, loyal communities around them. And those are the ones that spread like crazy.

One great way to build a sense of community around your content is to create a “rallying cry” post - a piece of content meant to unite your audience around a specific idea, topic or theme.

Usually, this is done around a principal of your brand. Do you have a strong opinion or position on something in your brand that you can “rally” around in your content?

These posts are usually motivational to the right audience, and repel the wrong type of people. In case you aren’t aware, this is where marketing magic is made.

These work so well to drive traffic (and even conversions) because they tend to be a bit controversial, and controversial topics tend to drive high arousal emotion which drive shares.

Tips for rallying cry posts:

Don’t worry about rubbing some people the wrong way. Those people probably aren’t part of your target audience, anyway.

Choose to rally around a strong or controversial topic.

Educational Posts

Educating your audience by giving as much information away as possible (yep, for free) builds trust with your readers, and establishes your expertise.

While almost all of the types of content in this guide aim to educate (or inspire, or entertain) in some way, this type of post explains a specific problem, concept or idea to the audience.

The educational post establishes credibility and expertise and can be powerful to help solve a problem or answer a question, like Anthony from Magnetic Memory Method has done to educate his audience about how sleep affects memory:

Jay Abraham said that if you can define a problem better than your customer, they assume you have the solution. There’s no better way to define a problem then through an educational post.

Tips for educational posts:

Tackle one problem or concept at a time. This will keep the post focused and be most useful to your audience.

Be as thorough as possible. It can be difficult to get past the “curse of knowledge” and remember what it was like to not know about the topic, but don’t assume your audience has any basic knowledge about your topic.

Lead by Example Posts

Chances are, you’re creating content around your topic because you know a thing or two about it - from experience.

That’s why your audience follows you, right? Most of us have something we can demonstrate for our audiences.

That’s where this post comes in. The lead by example post shows your audience how to do something that you’ve done, wrapping your personal story into the instruction.

This post not only helps your audience achieve something, it also establishes expertise and builds a relationship with them. After all, they’re reading about your personal story. It’s an excellent opportunity to share more of yourself with them.

This type of post combines examples (from yourself) with actionable strategies and steps to achieve something, allowing you to both educate and bond with the audience. It’s a win/win.

Tips for lead by example posts:

Use “you” language rather than “I” language. It’s easy to default back to talking about yourself in this post because you’re explaining how you did something, but instead of angling it as “here’s how I did it”, frame it with “here’s how you can do it”. Otherwise it can start to read like a diary entry.

Step by step works well for this type of post. Try not to leave any steps out.

Don’t forget to include any tools you used to help you. You should be giving away as much as possible to make it easy for your audience to replicate your results.

Series Posts

Have you ever started to create a piece of content that quickly grew legs of it’s own?

All of a sudden that straight forward guide you were writing ended up becoming a behemoth - and far too much for regular blogs not like Sumo to publish in one shot.

These types of situations are perfect for the series posts.

Break up the information into smaller, natural chunks and drop it out to your audience, and then tease the next post in the series to generate buzz and anticipation and at the end, make sure they’re all interlinked for easy reference.

You can do this around something you’re teaching your audience, different takes on the same topic from different experts within your company (like we did with our 0 to 10K series - Nat’s here, and Sarah’s here) or even a meaty topic that is complex in nature.

Tips for series posts:

If the content is actionable, don’t throw all of the content it the series at your audience in too short a time frame. Give them time to act on it.

Build anticipation for the next post in the series. Let your audience know when to check back.

Tools Posts

In our guide to the types of emails to send to your list, I told you that people love tools.

Your audience does too. It’s because we love anything that can help us achieve something in less time (of course!).

Almost every industry has tools or resources that can be used to make something even a little bit easier. We did this with our guide to all the tools you can use to drive traffic from Facebook:

Brainstorm all the tools that your audience can use, and go over how they can use them. Don't be afraid to give examples of how you’ve used the tools and how they’ve worked for you.

Tips for tools posts:

Capitalize on the popularity of list posts with the tools post, and combine them.

Include how to use the tools to make this type of content as useful as possible for your audience. Don’t just list them off!

The Getting to Know You Post

The best content marketers not only educate, entertain and inspire their audiences...

But they also bond with them.

Crazy, right?

The thing is, we like to buy things from people we know, like, and trust.

And we can’t know, like, or trust somebody who we know nothing about. Your audience wants to know the person behind the content. That’s why your About page is likely one of the most frequently visited pages on your website.

It’s the personal details that your audience remembers - sometimes even more than what you’re teaching them. This is also why personal brands work so well...

And why this post is so valuable.

The getting to know you post builds a bond between the reader and yourself, because you’re offering a more intimate and personal look into you - the person behind the content.

These posts can feel a bit self-indulgent, but you may be surprised as to how much your audience loves them.

These are often done around a personal event, like a birthday, like Chloe from One Hour Behind has done:

Tips for getting to know you posts:

Don’t do these too often. Space them out by a few months when you do publish these types of posts - otherwise your blog starts to read like a diary.

Publish these around an event like a birthday or a launch. They will allow you to bond with the reader and anchor you in their minds.

Q&A Posts

As you continue to create content and build your email list, you’ll inevitably get some questions.

And you’ll start to notice patterns in the questions you get. Sometimes, the answers to those questions warrant their own entire educational post, but sometimes the answers are quick or simple.

And the latter is the perfect type of question for the Q&A post.

As you notice these questions coming up, occasionally doing a post with answers to frequently asked questions can be fun, useful and can also take the pressure off of you from having to think up a topic for your content.